The Doom Of A City Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABCBCDEDFEEFFDGEGEHH IIJDJD A KLFFLKCMNOCOPPPO A QRRFPQFDQFSPDD C PFFPFFFF C FETTESFUVFASUAFUFFSU SWUFU A UUFXFUUXAFFFFFU A YZFYLFOA2FOA2VUB2B2V FFQQUUC2SVC2VFFRVUVC 2URC2 A UVUVURIURIFPPFAFFAVV C2C2 U UVUVUUHSASAHD2SUI | A |
FROM out the house I crept | B |
The house which long had caged my homeless life | C |
The mighty City in vast silence slept | B |
Dreaming away its tumult toil and strife | C |
But sleep and sleep's rich dreams were not for me | D |
For me accurst whom terror and the pain | E |
Of baffled longings and starved misery | D |
And such remorse as sears the breast | F |
And hopeless doubt which gnaws the brain | E |
Till wildest action blind and vain | E |
Would be more welcome than supine unrest | F |
Drove forth as one possest | F |
To leave my kind and dare the desert sea | D |
To drift alone and far | G |
Dubious of any port or isle to gain | E |
Ignorant of chart and star | G |
Upon that infinite and mysterious main | E |
Which wastes in foam against our shore | H |
Whose moans and murmurs evermore | H |
Insupportably sublime | I |
Haunting the crowded tumult of our Time | I |
Suspend its hurrying breath | J |
Like whispers of sad ghosts and spirits free | D |
From worlds beyond our life and death | J |
The unknown awful realm where broods Eternity | D |
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II | A |
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I paced through desert streets beneath the gleam | K |
Of lamps that lit my trembling life alone | L |
Like lamps sepulchral which had slowly burned | F |
Through sunless ages deep and undiscerned | F |
Within a buried City's maze of stone | L |
Whose peopling corpses while they ever dream | K |
Of birth and death of complicated life | C |
Whose days and months and years | M |
Are wild with laughters groans and tears | N |
As with themselves and Doom | O |
They wage with loss or gain incessant strife | C |
Indeed lie motionless within their tomb | O |
Lie motionless and never laugh or weep | P |
All still and buried deep | P |
For ever in death's sleep | P |
While burn the quiet lamps amidst the breathless gloom | O |
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III | A |
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My boat lay waiting there | Q |
Upon the moonless river | R |
Whose pulse had ceased to quiver | R |
In that unnatural hush of brooding night | F |
I thought Free breezes course the billowy deep | P |
And rowed on panting through the feverous air | Q |
Leaving the great main waters on in my right | F |
For that canal which creeps into the sea | D |
Across the livid marshes wild and bare | Q |
So slowly faded back from sight | F |
As cloth a dream insensibly | S |
Fade backward on the ebbing tide of sleep | P |
That city which had home nor hope for me | D |
That stifling tomb from which I now was free | D |
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IV | C |
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Like some weak life whose sluggish moments creep | P |
Diffused on worthless objects yet whose tide | F |
With dull reluctance hard to understand | F |
Refrains its death in life from death's full sleep | P |
The river's shallow waters oozed out wide | F |
Inclosing dreary flats of barren sand | F |
So merged at last into the lethal waste | F |
That bounds of sea and stream could not be traced | F |
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V | C |
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Long languidly I rowed | F |
With sick and weary pain | E |
Between the deepest channel's bitter weeds | T |
Whose rankness salt slime feeds | T |
And so out blindly through the dismal main | E |
Now shaken with a long hoarse growling swell | S |
And soon the Tempest as a King who had slept | F |
The sleep of worn out frenzy while his slaves | U |
Cowered still in stupor till he woke again | V |
Refreshed for carnage from his torpor leapt | F |
Breathed swarthy pallor through the dense low sky | A |
And hurrying swift and fell | S |
Outspeeded his own thunder bearing glooms | U |
Then prone and instantaneous from on high | A |
Plunged down in one tremendous blast | F |
Which crashed into white dust the heaving waves | U |
And left the ocean level when it past | F |
There was a moment's respite silence reigned | F |
Such shuddering silence as may once appal | S |
The universe of tombs | U |
Ere the last trumpet's clangour rend them all | S |
And I sank down one frail and helpless man | W |
Alone with desolation on the sea | U |
To pray while any sense of prayer remained | F |
Amidst the horrors overwhelming me | U |
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VI | A |
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How shall I tell that tempest's thunder story | U |
The soldier plunged into the Battle stress | U |
Struggling and gasping in the mighty flood | F |
Stunned with the roar of cannon blind with smoke | X |
'Midst yells and tramplings drunk and mad with blood | F |
What knows he of the Battle's spheric glory | U |
Of heavenly laws that all its evil bless | U |
Of sacred rights of justice which invoke | X |
Its sternest pleading of the tranquil eye | A |
Triumphant o'er its chaos of the Mind | F |
Commanding all serene and unsubdued | F |
Which having first with wisest care designed | F |
Works to the end with vigilant fortitude | F |
And from that field so drenched with angry blood | F |
Shall reap the golden harvest VICTORY | U |
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VII | A |
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There was a stupor stung with pain and fear | Y |
Amidst the strangling surf flung on and on | Z |
There was bewilderment above all dread | F |
Delirious calm and desperate joy austere | Y |
Of revelling through the tempest lorn and lone | L |
My boat and I with dizzy swiftness sped | F |
In strange salvation from the certain doom | O |
Along the urgent ridges over reeling | A2 |
And gathering up their ruins as they fled | F |
And down into the depths of scooped out gloom | O |
Whose crystal walls glowed black in the revealing | A2 |
Of lightning kindled foam and up again | V |
Perched on the giddy balance of two waves | U |
Which fiercely countering mingle with the shock | B2 |
And rush aloft confused and tower and rock | B2 |
Foaming with wild convulsion till amain | V |
The mass heaves down from struggling self destroyed | F |
And leaves us shuddering in a gulfy void | F |
Confused and intermingled fire sea air | Q |
Wrought out their ravage for the thunders there | Q |
Were echoing in the dreadly stormless caves | U |
And shook the deep foundations of the seas | U |
The air was like an ocean drenched with spray | C2 |
Whose meteor flakes outflashed tumultuously | S |
Against the sinking heaven's black incline | V |
When sudden lightnings seemed to burst their way | C2 |
Up through the deep to flood and fire its brine | V |
Ingulfing for each moment all the Night | F |
The blackness and the howling rage in light | F |
More lurid and appalling a World pyre | R |
But heart and brain were overwrought and soon | V |
All vision reeling from my powerless eyes | U |
I lay in quiet mercy granted swoon | V |
As senseless as the boat in which I lay | C2 |
And we two things through all the agonies | U |
Of night tornado sea and fire | R |
Were drifted passive on our fearful way | C2 |
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VIII | A |
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I know not for what time I lay in trance | U |
Nor in what course the tempest hurled us on | V |
At length to scarce believed deliverance | U |
I woke and saw a sweet slow silent dawn | V |
Upgrowing from the far dim grey abyss | U |
So slow it seemed like some celestial flower | R |
Unfolding perfect petals to its prime | I |
And feeling in its secret soul of bliss | U |
Each leaf a loveliness for many an hour | R |
With amaranthine queenship over time | I |
It grew its purple splendours flecked and starred | F |
With golden fire spread floating up the steep | P |
Until they sole possessed the mighty sweep | P |
Of crystal lucent aether its regard | F |
The blessing of a light of peace and love | A |
Charmed with a gradual spell the sullen mood | F |
Of the sea giant until all subdued | F |
No more his huge bulk livid shook and hove | A |
The meteor threatenings of his tawny mane | V |
No more growled lingering wrath and turbulent pain | V |
But calm and glad th' unmonstered monster lay | C2 |
Beneath the royal sun's perfected sway | C2 |
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IX | U |
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And there was Land Where seemed a bank of clouds | U |
Piled in the South now nobly one by one | V |
The pinnacles of lofty mountain peaks | U |
Flamed keen as stars enkindled by the sun | V |
Emerging as with life from out their shrouds | U |
Of silvern haze far cleft with roseate streaks | U |
And far beneath them down along the shore | H |
A wave of low round hills gleamed pure and pale | S |
But soon like any human life | A |
The golden promise of whose dawn doth fail | S |
Into the same drear noon of barren strife | A |
Of which our hearts were weary sick of yore | H |
The day grew chill and dark | D2 |
And through its sullen hours the wintry gale | S |
Beat restlessly my b | U |
James Thomson
(1)
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